One of our readers, who asked for his name to be withheld, had this to say about my ELR post

Not trying to excuse the elr….but you have to look at inventory on it with some sort of intelligence… not the usual approach. There are about 500 elr dealers…. do the frickin math.

Two units per store. Some have more….some have less. You act as if there are ELRs pouring onto the streets.

OEM has to supply the dealers who signed up to sell it right? Launches have to fill the channels…. you write like Cadillac is drunkenly building these without a clue.

Our reader certainly has a point, but I still think that there are too many examples on the lots, given how these cars are selling. And the high price tag – even if most of these cars will be leased – makes it a hard sell, especially against a Tesla Model S.

60 Comments on “Answer Of The Day: Reader Response To The ELR Sales Question...”

I’m reminded a little bit about the Chevy SSR “sport truck”, widely derided as a sales failure but the SSR was never designed to be anything other than a vehicle to bring people into the showroom to see it. The Lansing Craft Center that assembled the SSR had an annual capacity of not much more than the 13,000 or so SSRs they planned on selling. At the time, Chevy had something like 4,500 stores. That works out to about one car in the showroom, a demo to drive and a car in inventory to for each of the dealers. The 2,000 to 3,000 ELRs a year that Cadillac says it will sell are barely enough to fill the pipeline.

Getting back to the SSR, ASC, which was an important vendor and subcontractor for the SSR project, commissioned a market research study which claimed that having the SSR in their showrooms contributed to dealers selling about 70,000 full size SUVs or pickup trucks. If the SSR indeed helped sell that many of GM’s most profitable vehicles then I’d have to say that as a halo car it worked.

I still don’t understand the pricing strategy. It should have been about what a loaded CTS coupe costs to give CTS coupe buyers a green alternative. They also should have given it greater battery capacity and a more powerful electric motor to give it a performance advantage over the Volt. I’m surprised that in designing the Voltec platform they didn’t give themselves the option of leaving room for more battery cells in the future.

Of course ASC said that, just to keep the GM business. Of course marketing has a tea-leaves gimmick to quantify the unverifyable. How many more sales would they have had if they ashtray was on the left?

What gets me in the showroom is a brand not having a bunch of black dots in Consumers Reports when the model is 5-10 years old. You can’t say THAT to the GM execs though, all you get is a baffled, blank stare.

True, but halo cars aren’t necessarily meant to drive showroom traffic. They’re about image, and Chevy was trying to recapture some performance cred in something not named “Corvette.” And the SSR was always a pretty legit performer. At least they didn’t stick a V-6 in it, like Plymouth did with the Prowler. Now, THAT car was a joke and did nothing for the brand.

I think the SSR actually paved the way for the Camaro, another retro performance car, which has been successful for Chevy. Mission accomplished.

My understanding is that it was heavy and initially underpowered. I believe they added more engine later.

FreedMike: “I think the SSR actually paved the way for the Camaro, another retro performance car, which has been successful for Chevy. Mission accomplished.”

The continuing relative success of the Mustang and that two-door from Chrysler probably had more to do with justifying the Camaro. Low sales of the two-seat SSR could not possibly have helped.

And when you say, “Mission accomplished,” you imply that proving the market for the Camaro was the real plan for the SSR. That’s crazy… It makes no sense to sink massive development dollars into a car to prove a market for different car exists.

The original version was outperformed by the likes of the PT Cruiser GT and the LS2 version was outperformed by every other LS powered vehicle that ever existed. I think it is one of the worst things GM ever created and belongs next to Cimarron and G3 in their hall of shame and no one should ever speak of it again.

GM killed the F-body because they claimed the market was for that type of car was gone, then they immediately come out with with the SSR and GTO which both vastly sold worse than the F-body did in its worst years.

As Lutz said when the F-Body Camaro/Firebird were unceremoniously dropped in 2002. “Nobody buys coupes anymore” They waved the white flag in the ponycar wars yet they still produced the Trailblazer based SSR coupe/truck and imported Aussie Holden GTO. Ranks up there with other boneheaded GM decisions such as selling off 215 v8 tooling and not double dipping in rust preventative and not having front fenderwells on Vega’s.

The SSR may have actually kept people away from Chevy dealers. I know it tarnished my image of the brand. I may be in the minority, or not, but I think the SSR may be one of the most ill conceived vehicles ever built.

The ELR may be poorly priced, poorly positioned and poorly selling, but I think it is serving the prupose it was intended to. Cadillac needed some skin in the Electric hybrid game and it has some. I do feel that the ELR may have been an afterthought based on available tech, platforms, etc. Perhaps the next gen, if there is one, will be more aspirational than a chrome addition Volt.

Not that I have any plans to buy a Cadillac, but if I were…I’d want a Cadillac that LOOKED like a Cadillac (the good ones). If I wanted an Acura coupe (do they even still make those?) I’d buy an Acura coupe.

Unfortunately there are no Cadillacs that looks like the cars that made the brand name big.
It’s an extension of BMW w/ ATS and CTS, which isn’t necessarily bad per say, but not in your face AMERICA, F$&@ YEA.

Whats truly unfortunate is the fact that ; 1) There are no true Cadillacs to be found . With each and every one being one badge engineered GM product or another [ overseas and domestic ] since the late 50s I might add !

And perhaps even more importantly ; 2) That being the fact that GM’s ever so deluded marketing mavens keep trying in vain to compare Cadillacs to their German betters [ much better in fact ] rather than promote the brand as an AMERICAN car for AMERICAN drivers on AMERICAN roads

Then add in ; 3) Which would be GM’s futile efforts to try and emulate and copy … never mind exceed the performance and handling capabilities of their German betters with those badge engineered OPELs Holdens and Chevys .. and then have the cojones to fake ‘ Ring Bling ‘ times and performance figures

And finally ; 4) Cadillacs pathetic , arrogant and ludicrous ad campaigns across the mark e.g. Yeah Mr I’m so cool Yuppie wanna be .. nice little speech @$&hat … but you’ve got no substance in your lifestyle or the car you drive to back it up

Here’s the problem: back in the day when Cadillac “made its name” (let’s say 1946-1966), “American” cars were distinctly different from “European” cars; and practically no Americans aspired to own any European cars. (The VW bug was not aspirational; it was highly utilitarian.) The values that the classic Cadillacs, Lincolns and Imperials represent have been firmly rejected by the Boomers and their progeny. American aspirational car tastes have been, by and large, Europeanized. So aspirational American manufacturers have to play that game, no matter how poorly.
You really think there’s a big market for an updated 1967 Coupe de Ville? It would be fun to see: put in the 6.2 liter GM truck motor that gets 21 mpg pushing a 1/2 ton truck, an 8-speed automatic, big-ass dual caliper brakes and an independent rear suspension, with MHD shocks and, of course, BOF construction.
Nah, they’d buy a Benz . . . or a Yukon Denali.

@DC Bruce – You response is a breath of fresh air. You would think none of these people have ever seen a Product LIfe Cycle curve. That’s Marketing 101. You can’t keep building the same old stuff. The market changes, you have to change with it.

Oh dear … oh me … oh my ! Yet another deluded GM apologist . Couldn’t possibly work for GM in one cpacity or another now …. could he ?

Here’s why GM can’t GIVE ELR’s away ;

Its a $70,000 pretend EV PlugIn extended range hybrid – that in reality is the $40,000 VOLT that by the way GM can’t GIVE away either [ I’ve suggested a free VOLT with every new Silverado sold ] … that in fact is a $25,000 Chevy CRUZE that’ll not only try its best to kill you but …… is in fact a sub $20,000 DaeWoo Lasceti .. manufactured for the most part overseas and then assembled in the US under the pretense of being an American car

I saw a black ELR driving the other day and it was… Gorgeous. Out on the street, in real life, these things look great.

I’m glad they are selling them, but I’m not buying one. The only way GM will get me interested is to drop the Voltec platform into something with a bit more utility. And yes, I know the Volt is a hatchback.

Wasn’t the question how long will the ELR be around? He didn’t even answer that. If sales aren’t meeting forecast, well duh of course your gonna have excess inventory on dealer lots. You can shut down the line but you also have parts in your suppliers pipeline that you forecasted which your gonna get whether you need them or not to a point. Managing that is a little tougher. And then the question is do you warehouse all these ELR parts or turn them into finished goods(ELRs).

I am in the target market for both the Volt and ELR. SF Bay Area, 9 mile each way commute to my store, lover of tech and so on. When my Sienna finally gives up the ghost I will probably replace it with something like the Volt, C-Max or ELR.

So I went and built a Volt exactly to my wants and then the same ELR (as close as I could get anyway).

The result:
Volt w/ leather and all the goodies – $37,500
ELR w/ roughly the same goodies – $85,600

Now without a doubt the Caddy should be a much nicer car, materials, workmanship, etc. But I just can’t get past that nearly $50,000 premium. If that Caddy were $55,600 I might be able to talk myself into it after I drove both, but not at $85,000.

In GM-think, the Cimarron devalued the brand by only costing twice as much as the Chevy version. The Seville was a big success that was priced about four times as much as the Nova beneath the costume, so there’s probably at least one executive arguing that the ELR’s problem is that it isn’t $140K.

The Nova was the jumping off point for the first Seville – the frame, suspension and engine were all re-engineered specifically for the Seville. The engine was unique to the Seville, and it looked and drove nothing like a Nova – which, it could be said, was a pretty solid-driving car for its day. They could have done worse as a jumping-off point.

I don’t have a problem with an expensive car based on humble parts as long as the more expensive one is sufficiently differentiated from the cheaper model, which the original Seville definitely was. Lord knows Honda and Toyota have been raiding the cheaper-car part bins for any number of Acuras and Lexuses for a long, long time now.

If anything, this lesson of the Seville was lost on GM by the time the Cimarron came out. If they’d taken the time and money to restyle it, and give it some unique tech and other features, it might have been a nice product for Caddy, as the Seville was.

My uncle the orthodontist who bought a new first-generation Seville could not tell that it was based on a Nova sedan – heck, neither could I at the time – whereas anyone with minimal awareness could discern that a Cimarron was a Cavalier with nicer upholstery. Having a Seville-type price differential for the Cimarron would only have worked if GM had gone to the expense of a whole new body, different wheelbase, etc.

The engine in the first-generation Seville was an Oldsmobile 350 V-8. I believe it had fuel injection as standard equipment, which wasn’t available on contemporary Oldsmobiles, but the engine was not unique to the Seville.

Do yourself a favor . Forget about the EV Wanna BE VOLT and its badge engineered cousin that are in fact PlugIn Extended Range Hybrids … and focus on the i3 . Which btw is well below the ELR price wise

Seriously . I’ve driven them all . Having had an extended turn at the wheel with the i3 . To sum it up its the only EV / EV Wanna be – including the TESLA S ] that DOES NOT drive like a boat anchor on wheels . On another site I wrote an extended review of the i3 [ before getting the extended test drive ] with Two Thumbs up being my overall assessment of the car from Design – to Engineering – to Technology – to Driving Experience – to Comfort and Functionality . The i3 makes everything else in its class [ genuine EV’s ] look like an automotive dinosaur in comparison [ fun statistic .. the battery pack in a TESLA S weighs almost as much as the total weight of the i3 .. with similar numbers against the ELR/VOLT EV wanna bes as well ]

So will I/we buy one you might ask ? No .. as a matter of fact we will not . Why ? Because all EV’s lose 65% of their charge at 30f and below .. as well as 35% or more at 80f and above . Both being commonplace here in the Mile High City ..

Someone in a previous thread said the problem with the ELR was that it was Chevy technology hiding behind a Cadillac badge, I’d revise that to: the problem with the Volt was it was Cadillac technology hidden behind a Chevy badge. Tesla played it right, those with money will pay for the green tech cred, but those on a Chevy budget won’t.

I love this car (and that infamous commercial). So it’s based on teh Volt, it sure as heck doesn’t look like one. After all what was the ’67 Eldorado but an Oldsmobile in a sharp suit?

You guys make me laugh when you say that Cadillac is chasing the Europeans such as BMW. BMW builds their cars primarily for the U.S. market. They are the true American cars. I owned an X5 which was 100% American and had to be exported from South Carolina to me in Brisbane. The Germans understand your market better than your home grown luxury brands.

BMW builds its passenger cars for the German market, with some modifications and consideration made for the US.

The crossovers, on the other hand, are made primarily with the US in mind.

I suspect that Cadillac is attempting this renaissance too late in the game, and that the “Art and Science” design language is a liability. Ten years ago, it could have made sense, but now it’s just a waste of money.